


I Haven't Believed a Word

by inuoji



Category: teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: Gen, transgender character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 09:12:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1171302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inuoji/pseuds/inuoji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short narrative about Stiles coming out as a transgender man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Haven't Believed a Word

I Haven't Believed a Word You've Said

Chapter 1

Some days it gave her a rash. Some days it made her want to tear her skin away until only what she wanted was left, or until she bled to death. Some days, bleeding to death seemed like an OK option. At least she'd see her mom again in heaven. If that's where Stiles would even go when she died.

A geek girl, too in love with the sports she couldn't save her life to play, too sarcastic to be popular, too hyper to be seen as reliable. A girl whose skin crawled when she saw herself in the mirror. Who always wished for something different, but never knew quite how to put it. Until she realized the world was at her fingertips.

Google was a miraculous thing. Stiles had always been a snoop, but she was more invested in the Finding part than the Reading part of investigation. The internet was all Read and no Find. There was no thrill to typing the intricacies of how much you hate yourself into a search engine. Stiles was doing it anyway.

"If I'm going to keep thinking this way," she muttered to herself, "I at least want to know what it is."

There was a part of her that didn't want to know. A part that, if you asked it what was going on, would shrink into the smallest possible speck and say "nothing." This part was, in fact, what caused her whole body to shake as she read.

Dysphoria. 

The itch that couldn't be scratched, the hatred. When she haphazardly cut her beautiful, flowing hair off in a fit of rage. Why she spent hours getting dressed because nothing ever felt right. Nothing ever felt right.

Transgender.

A word she'd only ever heard on cartoons. A slur, an insult. Never a description. This couldn't be her. 

Stiles was normal.  
Stiles was normal.  
Stiles was normal.

Stiles slammed her laptop shut.

Chapter 2

Sometimes parts of her feel invisible. It doesn't surprise her when she makes the boy's lacrosse team, due to some miracle, and she doesn't take the time to explain that she's a girl to the coach. In fact, the idea of saying the words, "I am a girl," send her shaking again. 

Why can't she stop shaking? Stop panicking, Stiles. It's nothing. Hold it in you've always held it in.

She breathes.

This is how it goes for weeks. The team never sees her shower. Half of them assume she is very shy, the other half assumes she is very unhygienic. They all assume she is a he. The idea makes Stiles' stomach fill with butterflies. 

When they call her a he, she sometimes wants to cry. She briefly wonders why such a casual misconception makes her feel happier than she ever has.   
She remembers the google search.   
She stops smiling.

Stiles was normal.

Scott McCall had known her since grade school. Scott McCall knows why she doesn't shower with the rest of the boys. He says nothing and Stiles promises herself that, if she were to ever become rich, she would buy him anything he ever wanted.

Stiles wonders one day why none of the boys on the lacrosse team have noticed that the Boy Stiles they think they know doesn't attend their high school. She knows a few have hit on her. It makes practice awkward.

One day, Greenberg asks, "Who's your hot sister and why don't you go to school with her?"

"I don't have a sister. I'm homeschooled."

"No kidding? There's a dame who's your spitting image in my math class."

"What a coincidence." Stiles laughs nervously. Greenberg notices that the coach had been shouting insults at him for quite some time and runs to see what it was he'd done this time.

She doesn't know why she lied. She wishes, briefly, that it was the truth. She wishes that the Stiles the boys knew had a sister and that sister was not Stiles. She wishes she were the brother. 

He wishes they saw the same person.

Chapter 3

If he could stop thinking of himself as a He instead of a She, horses could fly. The second it happened it came at him in full force. 

Stiles Stilinski was normal. He really, really was. 

He was a teenager who was not as much of a lesbian as he thought he was. The idea of being straight made his mouth bitter. That he was part of the group that had called him names for being a girl who liked girls for years made his skin prickle with rage.

Stiles was not a girl who liked girls. He was a boy who liked girls.   
Now that he knew, there was no damming it up. There was no closet he could hide in. There was no fooling himself.

For the first time in weeks, he opened his laptop. The word was still there, at the top of his screen;

Transgender.

And this time, he kept reading. He read everything. Suddenly the world seemed so much brighter, so much clearer, and suddenly so much scarier. He read statistics that made his stomach churn. Murder rate, homelessness rate, unemployment rate.

All at once his world had made sense and in the very same moment he had never feared more for his life. 

"I'm a boy," he whispered to himself. The quiet admission was like a drug. 

"I'm a boy."  
Excitement, relief pulsed through his veins. Anxiety and fear mixed with understanding and pure, complete, all-encompassing hope.  
Stiles wasn't sure what he felt more.

Chapter 4

Months pass and he's sure of it. The momentary excitement was not momentary. This was serious.

The night he came out to himself, he prayed to his mom. He knew she'd understand. She was watching over him form heaven, he knew she was, and he imagined that hearing that her child was her son had left her weeping tears of joy. He imagined she would have swept him up in her arms, if she were here, and kissed his forehead and told him she loved him until her adoring voice seemed to be the only voice that could ever exist.

Telling his dad was another matter in it's own. Stiles recalled his dad telling him time and time again that he "hadn't believed a word Stiles had said since she learned how to talk." Even in his mind's mimicking voice, Stiles winced when he thought of his dad still thinking of him as a girl.

This was something he'd thought about for months. Plans had come and gone, words never seemed meaningful enough. There was absolutely no right way to go about this.

So Stiles took a path he never knew he was brave enough to take.

"Dad," it was early. Too early. If Sheriff Stilinski had been less dedicated to taking his job as seriously as possible, this time of the morning would be illegal. 

"Yeah," Sheriff Stilinski attempted with every ounce of his might to appear attentive, but all efforts were lost. It was too early. He had only 15 minutes before he needed to leave for work, but it was just too damn early.

"Dad, I'm a boy." Stiles all but shouted. The words hung in the room like Christmas lights in September. 

"Stiles, I haven't believed a word you said since you learned to talk,"

He knew it was coming. Stiles knew he was going to be rejected, to be denied, left to become homeless and jobless and hated and murdered. His hands shook. He heard his father draw a raspy breath before he spoke again.

"But that," Sheriff Stilinski continued, "I can believe."

Chapter 5

Stiles couldn't have asked for a better family. He loved his dad with all his heart, he especially loved how easy it was to make his teachers use the correct pronouns for him. Threats of harassment charges typically don't strike as much fear when they come from anyone who isn't the sheriff's son.

And it isn't until a year later that Stiles pays Scott a visit in the dead of night, holding a baseball bat and a flashlight, hoping to find half of a corpse.


End file.
